When a large company is getting clobbered by news stories and pundits, the damage-control response often includes packing full-page newspaper ads with solemn reassurances. That's what the Arthur Andersen accounting firm has been doing lately to wash some of the mud off its name as the outfit that assisted with Enron's phony bookkeeping.

Andersen is "committed to making fundamental changes in its business as a result of the issues raised by the Enron matter," says one of the big-type advertisements -- headlined "An Open Letter from Joe Berardino, Managing Partner and CEO, Andersen." The ad explains that changes "already taking place ... are major steps toward reforming our U.S. audit practice and transforming our firm."

Such ads are carefully crafted by PR agencies that specialize in blending tones of repentance, wisdom and resilience. The aim is to make headway with investors, Wall Street analysts, journalists and the general public. So, a contrite Andersen ad pledges that "we will be accountable for our actions, will learn from the experience, and will become a better

Call it another skirmish in the war on terror, which is translating these days as more or less anything deemed unpalatable to social harmony. Los Angeles school officials are pulling an edition of the Koran from the district's libraries because of complaints that the footnotes are anti-Semitic. This particular edition of Islam's Good Book dates from 1934.

An example of one such offending footnote: "The Jews in their arrogance claimed that all wisdom and all knowledge of Allah was enclosed in their hearts. But there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in their philosophy. Their claim was not only arrogance but blasphemy."

This doesn't seem so bad, but I suppose you can never be too careful. A story in the Los Angeles Times reports that copies of "The Meaning of the Holy Quran" were donated in December to the Los Angeles Unified School District by a local Muslim foundation. A school district official told the Times that the books, a goodwill gesture in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, were distributed to the schools last week "without the usual content review."

AUSTIN, Texas -- Enron, the biggest financial failure in U.S. history, is bigger than Enron. It's also bigger than Global Crossing and all the earn ings restatements headed our way, too.

"Systemic," "structural" and "epidemic" are the key words here. Take, for example, the gladsome tidings that Enron paid no taxes whatever during four of the past five years by cleverly transferring its assets to 881 subsidiaries in tax-shelter countries. (Also take the item that Enron would have gotten a $254 million tax rebate under the Republican "economic stimulus" package -- please. The bill is now mercifully defunct.)

Enron's tax practices are so common that the Center for Public Integrity estimates they cost the country $195 billion a year, which means the rest of us have to make up that missing tax money. That comes to $1,600 per taxpayer. See? Your very own stake in the Enron fiasco.

Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and now a hero because he saw this coming -- nobody paid attention to him the '90s, of course -- testified, "What has failed is

Right till the end of January, Dita Sari, an Indonesian in her late twenties, was preparing to fly from her home near Jakarta, Indonesia, to Salt Lake City. She would bask Feb. 7 in the admiration of assorted do-gooders and celebrities mustered by the public relations department of Reebok for the thirteenth annual Human Rights Awards, overseen by a board including Jimmy Carter and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. Reebok is a company that dukes it out each year with Adidas and New Balance for second place, far behind the behemoth of the business, Nike, in the world of sports shoes and apparel.

Make no mistake, the folk -- usually somewhere between four and six recipients -- getting these annual Reebok awards have all been fine organizers and activists, committed to working for minorities, the disenfranchised, the disabled, the underdogs in our wicked world.

Dita Sari's plan was to accept the ticket from Reebok, proceed to the podium in the Capitol Theater in downtown Salt Lake City, where the world's winter athletes are now assembled, and then, when offered the human

There has always been a fundamental struggle for the "soul" of hip hop culture, represented by the deep tension between politically-conscious and "positivity" rap artists versus the powerful and reactionary impulses toward misogyny, homophobia, corporate greed, and crude commodification.

The most recent example of this struggle for hip hop's "soul" was vividly expressed at the recent West Coast hip hop conference. Respected rappers such as Mike Concepcion and the D.O.C., and Def Jam founder and conference leader Russell Simmons, emphasized the need to mobilize artists around progressive goals, such as supporting voter education and registration campaigns. Solidarity was expressed for progressive feminist poet/artist Sarah Jones, who is suing over the Federal Communications Commission's fine imposed against an Oregon radio station's playing of her song, "Your Revolution." Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, in his keynote address, urged the hip hop community to renounce lyrics promoting violence and social divisiveness. "From the suffering of our people came rap," Farrakhan observed. "That should make you a servant of those that produced you."